


Math Homework

by Beth Harker (chiana606), chiana606, RewriteThisStory



Series: School 'Verse [3]
Category: Newsies (1992)
Genre: Canon Era, M/M, The lodge is empy and the boys are... doing math., newsies antics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-18
Updated: 2015-01-18
Packaged: 2018-03-08 05:02:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3196301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiana606/pseuds/Beth%20Harker, https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiana606/pseuds/chiana606, https://archiveofourown.org/users/RewriteThisStory/pseuds/RewriteThisStory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>David tutors Mush in math.  Jack thought David was at the lodge to see him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Math Homework

**Author's Note:**

> Series background: The summer is over, Mayer has healed and is back at work. David is made to go back to school. Change often begets change, but some things stay the same.
> 
> The stories in the series will follow David, Jack and at times, the rest of the newsies. They can be read in order or as stand-alone one-shots.
> 
> Stories in this series (listed in order): A Lesson in Linguistics, (two stories yet unpublished), Biology Lecture: The Anatomy of a Frog, Math Homework, (one story yet unpublished), Poetry Essay
> 
> Chiana606 and I like to RP to write stories. She usually takes David and I take Jack. Some of them never see the light of day. But this series stuck with us and we decided to translate most of it into a readable form.
> 
> The idea for this series (and most of the brilliant ideas) was Chiana606's- I'm just glad she keeps asking me to play in her sandbox.
> 
> Chiana606 wrote up "Linguistics" and I wrote up the other three stories in this series. Maybe one day one of us will write the missing ones we RPed and never wrote...
> 
> Originally posted to Tumblr: September 8, 2013

David had promised to meet Jack at the lodge house after school, so when his last class ended he went straight there. 

David shouldn't really have been allowed to just walk in. But Kloppman just shook his head, greeted him as Skittery, and asked, with a confused face and a knowing glint in his eyes, if he still had that stomach bug. 

David had been confused the first few times Kloppman had called him by the wrong name. He’d even tried, back then, to explain to Kloppman that he was Jack’s friend, David. But it wasn’t long before he realized that Kloppman was good at turning a blind eye to things he didn’t want to see. 

The blatant rule breaking had bugged David at first, but he was used to it now- and like now, it usually worked in his favor. David nodded vaguely in greeting and climbed the stairs. 

Unfortunately nobody else was there yet. After his initial disappointment wore off, he realized his mistake. He was too early. The guys were still out selling papes. 

This time David didn’t hesitate, he settled himself on Jack’s bed to wait. To pass the time he pulled out his math homework. His teacher had given him a pile of it. David didn’t mind too much though, he liked math. Focusing on math was like turning off a dozen switches in his mind. It was one of the few things that could still the racing thoughts that usually clamored for his attention. When he was working on math, math was all he thought about, and it was nice. Peaceful almost. 

He sat crosslegged on the bed and contentedly began working. He was doing proofs- the really long intensive kind, where one problem could take an hour to solve. This was the best kind of math. And time passed quickly without his notice.

/

It'd been a long day and Jack was tired. Since David went back to school Jack enjoyed work a little less. Worse, they didn't get to see each other as much. Plus, they were still trying to sort out that ‘other thing’- so things were different between them when they did get to see each other. But Jack looked forward to seeing David nonetheless. And he knew David would be at the lodge when he got there. David was always on time- a thought that brought a smile to Jack's face and a quicker step to his tired feet. The lodge house came into view and Jack bounded up the steps.

Jack walked in to see David sitting on his bunk, his head bent over a book, writing furiously, his brow furrowed in concentration. Jack watched as David impatiently brushed a distracting lock of hair off his forehead. The picture before him was just so... Dave. The thought made him smile.

Jack watched for another minute before announcing his presence. "Hey, Dave!" he called from across the room.

"Jack!" David looked up, surprised- but happy to see him. He smiled widely before looking back down at his page distractedly. He was almost done with the problem he’d been working on and didn’t want to leave it unfinished. "Hey, come sit up here and be quiet for a few minutes. I'm almost done with this."

Jack was torn between amusement and annoyance over the ‘sit and be quiet’ bit. He settled on amused and hopped up on the bed, causing David to bounce and his pencil to jump across the page.

Jack bit back a laugh at the look David gave him. He slung his arm over David's shoulders, "Good to see ya, Dave." 

"You too, just be careful, okay?" David tried not to sound annoyed. To soften his words, David scooted closer to Jack, who shifted on the bed to let him. David leaned back, resting his back comfortably against Jack's chest. He erased the spot where Jack had made him smudge his pencil before continuing his problem.

Jack was pleasantly surprised when David leaned against him. The feeling was warm and comfortable. "Yeah, I'll be good Dave. You won't even know I'm here." Jack absently ran his hand down David's arm and shoulder. His eyes followed the curls of David's hair and noticed how they brushed his neck. He rested his chin on David's shoulder to see what he was working on.

David was pretty sure that Jack hadn’t _meant_ to lie, but David definitely knew that Jack was there. In fact, he could not imagine being more aware of Jack's presence. He wondered when two people got to the point that they could just touch each other without feeling it through every inch of their body. He wondered when Jack’s touch would stop making him think he was going to go crazy if he kept touching him- or that he might go crazy if Jack stopped. It was a paradox. 

He half wondered if his dad felt like this every time his mother straightened his tie before sending him off to work in the morning, or touched his shoulder as she poured his coffee at breakfast. David had no clue how he was able to cope if he did. 

David closed his book and gave Jack a quick kiss. That's how it had been since the… thing... in the alley. Just quick kisses here and there- not even every time they met- just often enough to verify that they could still do it. They didn’t talk about it much- or at all really. It was just something that happened sometimes. 

He hopped down from the bed quickly, before Jack could respond. Jack sat there for a moment, startled. He still wasn't used to that. Not to say he didn't enjoy it every single time- but it was still surprising when it happened. Even more so since David had fled right after. He watched David's back walking away, book tucked under his arm.

He shook his head. He was about to hop down and follow him when Mush and Blink walked into the room. Instead, Jack flopped back on his bed and stared at the ceiling, trying not to think about kissing David. It was harder than it sounded.

David waved at Mush and Blink when he saw them come in, casually, like he hadn't just been kissing Jack Kelly. But he dropped his book, giving himself away. Some of the papers fell out of his math book, fluttering into a disordered mess on the floor. David sighed. Appropriate really, his thoughts were in the same state. He bent down to gather up his homework. 

"Hey Dave!" Mush ran over to help. He looked at one before handing it over. It looked like it was written in a foreign language- maybe some strange alien dialect. He'd read about aliens in _The Sun_. Scrawled all over the paper were letters and numbers, but they didn't make any sense. "What _is_ that, Dave?"

"Math homework," David said without further explanation. He was trying to reorder the pages he'd dropped. This was what came from kissing Jack- complete and utter disorder.

Mush wasn't helping much. He'd crunched things together that weren't meant to be crunched together. David had once shouted at a kid at school in a similar situation, but that was the kind of mood that school put him in. He couldn’t imagine shouting at Mush for trying to help. Not for this anyway. 

Mush noticed David was trying to flatten the pages he’d crumpled in his haste to help. He tried smoothing out the ones in his hands, but realized he was smearing the writing, so he stopped. He tried to wipe his hands on his pants without David noticing.

David bit back a sigh at what Mush was doing to his homework. He'd need to write it again when he got home.

"Math? Are you sure, Dave? That's a lot of letters for math. You sure it ain't readin'?" Mush looked at the page in David's hand again, "But then, I guess there's all them numbers..." Mush trailed off.

"It's math," David said. "They’re called proofs. Most of the guys I know don't like it much. It's sort of working at the problem backwards. You know what the answer is, but you have to prove it's really true."

Mush looked at him with his mouth open. Now David was _speaking_ another language. Maybe he'd been abducted by aliens. "If you already know the answer, why you gotta keep workin'?" Mush didn't know much about math but he was pretty sure that once you got an answer you were done.

"Well, imagine all the guys here in the bunk decided to gang up on you and tell you that one and one was five. You know it wasn't, but with everybody insisting you were wrong, you might start to doubt yourself, and need to prove that you were right, or else just listen to them."

Blink had been listening by the door. "Why wouldn't you just soak 'em 'til they stopped?"

"Do the guys at school do that to you, Dave? They shouldn't do that." Mush's face was concerned. He knew David had trouble at school- and that he never wanted to talk about it.

"I..." David flushed a little, which is what happened whenever the newsies tried to bring up the guys at school. It just felt weird talking about them, because he wasn't the same person at school as he was at the lodge. "Well... no. They don't do that.

Blink was still leaning against the door frame, his hands resting on his belt. He rolled his eye. He and Mush had talked about David's school problems. But David was pretty firm about the newsies not intervening. And so far they hadn't- other than that one time. They didn't even get to soak anyone that time- just let those stuck up school boys know that David had friends- and that friends looked out for each other. They thought things would get better after that, but apparently those school boys were dumber than they looked.

“Can you show me how to prove one and one is... is two?" Mush tried to distract David from his problems at school.

“That'd take _hours_ ," David started. "First you have to prove that numbers really exist… Seriously, it takes forever."

“...That they really exist?" Mush said slowly. He was confused again. How could numbers not exist?

Blink sensed that this discussion wasn't something that'd interest him- and was unlikely to end soon- so he jumped up on his bunk, pulled out a magazine and began flipping through it. 

"Some cultures don't believe in them," David said, warming to the topic. "There was this one we talked about... their language only has two number words - 'one' and 'more than one'.” He paused, realizing Mush may not have actually wanted a math lecture. "It's interesting, right?" he added, in a tone that suggested he found it desperately interesting, even if nobody else did. To his relief, Mush nodded, so David continued. "They don't even count. That's just not something that they can conceptualize."

"They don't count?” Mush shook his head. “That's weird, Dave. How would they know how many things they had? Like, apples or somethin'?" Mush shook his head, unable to imagine not knowing how many papes he had, or how many... anything there was.

"Well, I guess they know if they have enough apples, and if they are hungry or somebody in their family is missing an apple, they go find another one." David shrugged. "But like I said, proofs are really time consuming. I can show you some algebra if you want."

"It's still weird, Dave." Mush stopped thinking about weird people who didn't count right and jumped on David's last words. "What's algerbra? Is that math too?" Mush loved when David offered to teach him things.

"Yeah. It's math. It has numbers and letters and everything. Here," David handed Mush a piece of paper and sat down on the bit of floor closest to Jack's bunk. On his own paper he started scribbling out problems.

Mush sat down next to David and watched as David scrawled on the paper. None of it made any sense, but Mush watched rapt anyway.

"Here," David said. "You have to solve for A. Look, we'll start with an easy one.” David pointed to the first problem. “So if two plus A equals four, A has to be....?" David smiled, waiting for Mush's answer.

Mush looked at the paper and up at David's encouraging smile. He had no idea what David meant. "Um, four?"

"Okay, four is what we're trying to work up to. Imagine you have two apples, but you want to have four of them. How many apples do you still need?"

"Two." That was easy, everyone knew that.

"Exactly, so A is two. A is the bit that you are missing to get to four. Try the next one. Three plus A equals ten."

"Oh." Mush was starting to understand. "Wait, so now I have ten apples and I want ten?"

"Exactly!" Jack smiled at the ceiling. He could hear the excitement in David’s voice. He flipped over on his stomach and peered over the edge of his bed, his chin resting on his hands, watching David teach Mush math. ”Ok. So then you need…” Mush counted on his fingers, “Seven. Seven apples.” David nodded. He and Mush went through the math problems for a while. He’d started off with a few easy ones, letting them get increasingly harder as the paper went on. He couldn’t help but thinking that if anyone else were to walk in they would think he and Mush were discussing the logistics of opening up a fruit store, particularly in the problems where there were multiple variables. B came to represent bananas while X came to be peaches after none of them could think of a fruit that began with X. Mush wasn’t a terrible student either. He worked hard, and listened carefully. Mostly he was willing. “Wish you were going to my school.” David said, once the paper was near finished. “You’d handle it fine, and we’d have fun.” Then again, if Mush was at his school, maybe he wouldn’t be Mush anymore. He’d just be one of the masses. That thought saddened David. At first, Jack was amused and endeared watching David teach Mush about apples and oranges or whatever. But after a while it was just boring. Jack had thought that David was here to see him. It was getting late and David would have to go home soon. Jack sighed and flopped over on his back. He sighed again. He didn’t mean to. It just happened. He heard a similar noise from the bunk next to his and noticed Blink looked as bored as he did. Mush for his part was having a great time. He felt smarter than he ever had. David was a great teacher. 

"You two okay?" David asked. He'd been distracted for a moment by his worries about what Mush would be like at his school, but the sound Jack made pulled him out of it. "Do you need to go for a walk or something? It's probably boring just lying there."

"I thought we was gonna hang out, Dave, not do math lessons." He tried not to sound like he was whining, but he failed miserably. Blink looked at him and laughed. Jack kicked out his foot toward the other boy’s bunk. "Shut it."

"We _are_ hanging out," David pointed out. "Hanging out and doing math lessons aren't mutually exclusive, you know."

Mush looked up at Jack guiltily. "Hey, sorry Jack. We're done. Honest." Mush stood up. "Hey, thanks for teachin' me Dave. I liked it."

Jack hopped off his bunk and straightened up, tossing his hair out of his eyes. "Alright Dave, Mush said you're done, can we go eat now?" Jack wasn't really hungry, but he wanted to get Dave out of the bunk house. If he didn't, the other guys would get back and start talking to him and Jack wouldn't have two minutes alone with him. And he needed more than two minutes. They had unfinished business from before.

"Okay. Right. We can do that." David put his papers mostly back in order, shut them carefully in his book and stood, dusting himself off. "See you later, Mush."

Blink sat up and watched as Jack drug David out of the room by his arm. He looked down at Mush and laughed, "I think you were right."

Mush hopped up beside him and turned to face Blink, sitting close. "About what?" he asked.

"About Jack and David."

“What about them?” Mush asked innocently, grinning. 

“You know what I mean,” he said, punching him in the shoulder for playing dumb. Mush wasn't dumb- Blink had just listened to him do an hour’s worth of math problems- but then, Blink knew that even before any math problems told him so.

Mush grinned impishly. "Oh, you mean about them bein' like us?" He leaned over and kissed the other boy.

Blink grinned against Mush's mouth. "Yeah. That."

He kissed Mush again before grabbing his hand and pulling him off the bunk. "Come on, let's get outta here, the other guys will be back soon."


End file.
